maharetr

Have finished:
My grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry by Fredrik Backman. Finished, with a few tears on my part, and some low-key odd ableism on the author's part (not naming the 'boy with the syndrome', ever? Really?), and some tiny puzzlements, but still satisfying and I'm glad I read it. Was very similar to Extremely loud and extremely close from some years back, but I liked it much, much better. It felt like it was much less about making a Grand Point, and more about telling a cosy story about a group of people.

Strange waters Samantha Mills. OH GOD. So each year I mean to do at least some reading of the works rounded up by Asking the wrong question's Abigail Nussbaum as Hugo nominations in time to actually add my nomination. This year at least, I got around to reading one or two at all, never mind the long-past deadline *cough*. But HOLY GOD, I hope this short story made it. (ETA: sad it didn't, but so it goes) I love time travel stories So Much, as a preface, and this one both mashed my buttons and is also, I think, devastating in its own right. 6000 or so words and highly recced.

Currently reading:
Spindle's end by Robin McKinley. Despite my frustrations with Beauty, the things I loved about it were enough to sway me into picking up the next available (to me) one. I'd actually read the first page a few times over the last few years, and kept bouncing off it for whatever reason, but apparently cosy domestic magic is 1000% what I'm about right now, because yup here for needing to de-magic your teakettle and asking bread to stay bread, very much. A hundred or so pages in and it strikes me as a deeply leisurely read, and one that I don't wan to rush through for the sake of having read it, so I'm putting it aside for a few months probably because...

Up next:
Clearing the decks because the Hugos are here! The Hugos are here!

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Finished reading:
Wonder woman: warbringer by Leigh Bardugo. Okay, I'm now officially a Leigh Bardugo fan. I love this SO fucking much. I'm really glad I persisted with it. It simultaneously didn't read grippingly, at yet I found myself inhaling sharply at tense moments, so something was Really Working. Also the dialogue is sharp and funny, and made me either snicker out loud on the train, or make me hug the book to my chest. It's queer- and fat-positive, and there are So Many Women all over the place, doing things and getting shit done. The ending could have been hokey but Bardugo stuck the landing and it came off as deeply satisfying. Nim is the BEST no-big-deal fat, queer, Indian character, I love her, and also I love Diana So Much. Just like the movie, the 'fish-out-of-water' trope could have been used for cruelty-humour and just like the movie it really, really wasn't, and it's all intrinsically and inalienably feminist and I flail with love.

"I shouldn't have called you names," Theo said. "You're not fat or ugly."
Nim cut him a glance. "I am fat, Theo, and far too hot for your sorry ass." Just. YES, GOOD. I am so glad this book exists.

Currently reading:
My grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry by Fredrik Backman. Just started. Ella is seven going on eight. She's not very good at it. (Adults think she's too immature, or too mature, depending on which adult you ask, when). Grandmother is seventy-seven going on seventy-eight. She's not very good at it either. Yeah, okay, I’m smitten.

A hundred pages from the end, and it’s simultaneously charming and hokey, and pat, and weirdly compulsive all at once (that might be my own compulsion to finish things kicking in, but I’ve definitely put books down before, so w/e). I’m pretty sure I can see the denouement coming, and it still feels satisfying. Also it turns out this is a translated novel, and I’m wildly impressed by Henning Koch’s work here. I’ve not read many translations, to be fair (the only other one I can think of reading was attempting Girl with a dragon tattoo and dear god that was wooden), but this reads superbly well.

Up next:
Was going to be Kameron Hurley’s new one, but that’s taking a few weeks to travel through physical space, as things are wont to do. Maybe looking at Charlie Jane Anders’ new one?

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Have read:
Any ordinary day: what happens after the worst day of your life? by Leigh Sales. This was a requested Christmas present. I love Sales as an interviewer, and I’d been keenly looking forward to this. The first two thirds of this book I felt were sort of repetitive and lacked depth, maybe. Or at least, I was expecting more depth, although I don’t actually know *how* she could have achieved it. The last third of the book was much more interesting to me – exploring a little bit the people who don’t cope, and touching on why; also talking to those who work in tragedies and work with those who are grieving. It’s been about two months since I finished this, and I can’t say I came away with it with much deep resonating ideas, although I don’t regret reading it, which is also something.

Beauty: a retelling of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinnley. I am so torn on this book. I want to give one part of it – the story of her family and the immensely comforting prose (minus a handful of sentences that an editor should have tweaked) five stars. The sequence where Beauty’s family falls on hard times and has to relocate to a small village in the forest, and the descriptions of them cleaning and tending to the house and making it a home, were exactly what I’d been hoping Mandy would be. The atmosphere of the village, and then of the castle, were fantastically top-notch. The actual Beast fairytale… given the previous riches, the beast himself and her “romance” with him were achingly disappointing. It turns out that this book was originally written decades before the Disney movie, so it’s unfair of me to ask a book to interrogate something that didn’t exist yet, but I still wanted a retelling to examine the power imbalance of prisoner/jailer. There was so much that could have been done there – the beast being just as imprisoned as Beauty, and how he felt about ‘having’ to imprison someone in turn as the price of his potential freedom; her developing attraction to him, and how she felt about it; her shift from seeing herself as ‘ugly’ to ‘beauty’; his story of being imprisoned for 200 years… I just… McKinnley/Beauty says she came to trust and love the beast, but I didn’t feel like we saw a damn bit of that developing. I feel like McKinnley didn’t actually want to write the “romance” of the original, so she dodged *everything* to do with that part of the fairy tale, and the story suffered for it so badly. I’m glad I read it for everything else, but she could have made all of it amazing, and I am sad.

Currently reading:
Are you my mother? A comic drama by Alison Bechdel. This has been in my physical to-read pile for literal years. It’s my first actual book of Bechdel’s, and I love the art style, but coming in ‘late’ – not having read Fun Home, for example, the first few chapters of her writing about her mother grated as navel-gazing in a way that it might not have if I’d come to this already in love with her work. But the navel gazing is growing on me, and gets interlaced (beautifully, in the art style) with some legit interesting psychoanalysis, and that addition plus the comic style makes it easy to inhale a chapter before bed, and I’m continuing accordingly.

Wonder woman by Leigh Bardugo. I rather liked the inventiveness and richness of Bardugo's original work Six of crows, so I was excited to see this Wonder Woman tie-in. I’m 30-ish pages in, and it’s slow going, but also slowly hooking me in. It has both the denseness of Six of crows with the slight distancing that often comes with writing characters that aren't your own etc. I’m persisting, moderately interestedly. Also, I had no idea that the Amazons had been mortal women from around the world who had cried out their Goddess’s name while dying in battle, and were therefore granted immortality. That’s the COOLEST CONCEPT, and the movie utterly failed to mention it and I feel robbed. I’m persisting with the book, at least for a while longer.

Up next:
That feels like a very ambitious concept right now...

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Wednesday reading meme from the last of 2018, cobbled together from mostly-finished drafts that I never got around to posting. I did a rough count, and with some arsey counting [all the hugo short stories as a single novel, for eg], I read a Solid Lot of books by my standards, evening out to a book a fortnight, which is pretty great, and more than I thought I'd done. Yay tracking!

Put aside:
A tenderness of wolves: Picked up because the title had a “is this a classic?” ring to it, and the first page was fantastic, as was the setting and the premise (Woman goes out into Canadian winter wilderness to try and clear her son’s name, or at least find out wtf he did, from memory). But I found myself getting frustrated with it very early on – it’s told in aggressively present tense, even the flashbacks when it ‘should’ have been past tense or past perfect. Artistic licence and all that, but this was a first novel and while it was probably a good first novel, it…should have varied its tenses, dammit. *has judgey feelings*

Bone witch: gorgeous cover, interesting premise, and witches! But then we started getting to “people get a heart jewel necklace that fills with colour to show their True Selves/Destinies” and I’m so Done with rigid predestination McGuffin stories. I don’t even care enough to see if this gets subverted in the end. Returned to library.

Seraphina by Rachel Hart. A book that’s been on my radar for years, and finally picked up. It’s a legit lovely fantasy story of humans and dragons forging an uneasy truce, but it’s also somewhat dense and just enough second-world that I didn't quite have the brain for it so put it aside.

Finished reading:
My own devices by Dessa. Read sometime back, but I forgot to record. I love her rap music, and pre-ordered her memoir. It's more of a collection of loosely connected essays than an autobiography, and once I realised that I liked it a lot more. She's unsurprisingly really good at putting several disparate concepts in proximity, seemingly rambling about them and then pulling them into an impressive gut-punch at the end of many of the essays/chapters. Do rec.

Pirate queen by Morgan Llywelyn. Short telling of the life of (Grace O’Malley) and the conflicts between England and Ireland in the 1500s. Loved it, despite the weird writing, and the lack of any further glossary/bibliography/maps/useful details. I’m desperate for more information about her, but all the biographies I’ve looked up seem to be typo-ridden messes according to reviews, much to my surprise.

Woman world a webcomic(?) in book form. Men die out, right down to the Y-chromosome-sperm in the sperm banks, leaving a world of women. An interconntected series of comics strips with the lightest of narratives strung together with jokes rather than a ‘actual’ story, which wasn’t what I’d expected and threw me for the first half. But I also found myself chuckling out loud quite a lot, so I’m not sure what to make of it. Charming, and A+ for diversity of ages, races, and disabilities.

The thing with Finn by Tom Kelly. Younger YA. Picked up because of the title, the charming art of the cover and the first few pages of excellent first person narrator voice that I wanted to curl up with and learn more about. 20 pages in and I’m delighted by 10-year-old Danny, and wanting to see him process whatever (tragic, I’m assuming) thing happened to his twin brother, Finn. (Finished many months ago, and I can remember that there were some devastatingly good lines about feelings and grief as processed through a child’s eye and/or at a child’s level, but I foolishly didn’t write them down). Do rec.

Mandy by Julie Andrews. A darling, sweet story of a girl who lives in an orphanage, and who comes across a cottage in the woods and fixes up the garden and tends to her little patch of the world. I expected this to hit my emotional buttons much more than it actually ended up doing, and I can't quite put my finger on how and why it missed me. Possibly because she doesn't actually ever live in the cottage? It was well written, it just never hooked me, and I'm legit not sure why.

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Finished:
The things I didn’t say by Fiona Fornasier. Piper, 17, Australian, has Selective Mutism. I hate the label Selective Mutism - as if I choose not to speak, like a child who refuses to eat broccoli. I've used up every dandelion wish since I was ten wishing for the power to speak whenever I want to. I'm starting to wonder if there are enough dandelions. This was a charming, sweet read. I picked it up because I wanted to learn more about how it felt to have SM, and how to function in the wider world, and it was good for that. The first two-thirds were excellent, the last third fell into blink-worthy melodrama, but I still read it in about two days, and I’m glad I did.

Currently reading:
Magic dirt by Sean Williams. (The best of Sean Williams short stories of the 1990s). Finally unearthing books from my room, and actually giving some of them a go. Read two so far, and they’ve been a nice way to ease into bed of a night. The second story had a particularly good opening set up.
Both of them have had those light moments of "…this was written by a guy" feel about them in the way they mention women characters, but not in a way that makes me want to stop reading, just in a way that I might want to remember for my own writing.

Pirate queen by Morgan Llywelyn. A kid’s historical short novel about the Irish pirate queen Granuaile vs the queen of England, Elizabeth I. The writing is present tense and wooden and frankly strange, but Ganuaile is So Great. SO GREAT. Given it’s a Children Will Learn novel I really want a Gaelic pronunciation guide, and possibly a sailing glossary while they’re at it. I’m persisting with it, because short and also she is SO GREAT.

Up next:
Mandy by Julie Andrews is in fact allegedly in the post!

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( Dr Who episode two - 'The Ghost Monument' spoilers below )

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Put aside:
A tenderness of wolves by Stef Penney: Picked up because the title had a "is this a classic?" ring to it, and the first page was fantastic, as was the setting and the premise (Woman goes out into Canadian winter wilderness to try and clear her son's name, or least find out wtf he did, from memory). But I found myself getting frustrated with it very early on - it's told in aggressively present tense, even the flashbacks when it 'should' have been past tense or past perfect. Artistic licence and all that, but this was a first novel and it was probably a good first novel, it…should have varied its tenses, dammit. *has judgey feelings, plus I really like tense changes*

Bone witch Rin Chupeco: gorgeous cover, interesting premise, and witches! But then we started getting to "people get a heart jewel necklace that fill with colour to show their True Selves/Destinies" and I'm so Done with rigid pre-destination stories. Returned to library.

Finished
a record of a spaceborn few by Becky Chambers. I liked it - all of the many characters had time to breathe and got satisfying arcs - but I cannot overstate how little plot there is. It is not necessarily a bad thing: Chambers clearly wanted to do a character novel, and that's fine, but there was very little narrative drive as a result. This is my second favourite of the three novels (the second being my most favourite) but I'm still very keen to see what she comes up with next.

My Candlelight novel by Joann Horniman. This is the sequel/companion novel to the novel of my heart (Secret Scribbled Notebooks). I was delighted to find it in a second-hand bookshop and to own a copy of both. I love it still even if I'd rewritten some parts of it in my memory in the intervening years. Queer (bisexual) YA.

Woman world by Aminder Dhwaliwal. A webcomic(?) in book form. Men die out, right down to the Y-chromosome-sperm in the sperm banks, leaving a world of women. An interconntected series of comics strips with the lightest of narratives strung together with jokes rather than a 'actual' story, which wasn't what I'd expected and threw me for the first half. But I also found myself chuckling out loud quite a lot, so I'm not sure what to make of it. Charming, and A+ for diversity of ages, races, and disabilities.

The thing with Finn by Tom Kelly. Younger YA. Picked up because of the title, the charming art of the cover and the first few pages of excellent first person narrator voice that I wanted to curl up with and learn more about. A 10-year-old boy, Danny, and whatever (tragic) thing happened to his twin brother, Finn.
(Having now finished) This was a wonderful, perfectly-distilled-10-year-old voice that makes some really incisive points about grief and feelings, and I was very impressed. I'm not sure what the actual significance of the last page or so was, but that doesn't stop me from reccing this highly.

Currently reading:

Seraphina by Rachel Hart. A book that's been on my radar for years, and finally picked up. It's a legit lovely fantasy story of humans and dragons forging an uneasy truce, but it's also somewhat dense and just enough second-world that I don't quite have the brain for atm, so pausing it for a few days to read The thing with Finn. Going to open it up and try again.

Up next:
I'm really hoping that Mandy by Julie Andrews actually exists in Dymocks' warehouse somewhere.

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Finished reading:
Terra Nullius by Claire G Coleman. The premise of this is absolutely fantastic. It's also her first novel, which shows up in jarring ways: strange sentences, and somewhat underdeveloped characters. It's such a good premise, though – that genuinely, to my shame, helped reframe my thinking on its topic – that I'm willing to give her a pass, and look interestedly to whatever her next project turns out to be.

Jessica Jones: Alias vol. 1. The art style is a little static – possibly intentionally, but I prefer more movement in my frames... I say, as if I have the knowledge to pass judgment on this stuff. I really don't. But the writing and the pacing is otherwise absolutely fantastic. I love Jessica and all her fuckups, and her wry, bitter voice, the Matt Murdoch cameos, and Carol Danvers as her long-suffering friend and support. I am so here for it, and so far, would totally read the other three volumes even with the Kilgrave storyline. (Content note for borderline sex-as-self-harm in the first few pages of this volume, not graphic, though.)

Up next: (as if in, starting sometime this evening probably)
(Hugh Howey's) Wool, which turns out to be a standalone graphic novel of one of his first books – first self-published, then picked up for a substantial book contract. Interested, with slight trepidation now.

Up later:
The house of shattered wings by Aliette de Bodard. Interested for this one.

Record of a spaceborn few by Becky Chambers. Her first book was Good with minor flaws. HE second was tight, and excellent. I’m really, really excited to see what she’s got for her third.

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I fell off the wagon for a while there. In retrospect I burned out hard on reading Hugo works.

Finished reading
Six of crows by Leigh Bardougo. This was like a rich, meaty stew. Seriously, for some reason all the metaphors I can think of are related to food. A heist novel set in a fantasy-magicked Victorian London. This has fantastically dense, chewy (see?) worldbuilding, which made for slower but more rewarding reading. I liked many of these characters in their flawed way, although six was possibly slightly too many to keep in the air (or maybe just in my head) at once. Very well-realised...basically everything, although I tend to drift once we get into the nitty-gritty of the actual heists and trust the author will flag when things are/aren't working properly. Legit interested in reading the sequel – this book did a fair job of wrapping up the current plot while leaving enough tempting hooks for next book. I'd heard whispers about queer rep, which was why I picked it up to be honest, and it's there in secondary characters, and both subtle and correspondingly utterly unremarked, and I liked it for that.

Currently reading
Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman. Set in an Australia of Settlers vs Natives, of early Protectionist days. I really want to like this, but the writing style is taking some getting used to – the grammar is waving back and forth between being 'non-standard' to being flat out 'that sentence has wandered away and gotten lost'. But the more I read the more I adjusted and settled into it, I'm keen to keep reading, and glad I stuck with it.

Up next
Jessica Jones vol 1
Wool Vol. 1
Both impulse grabs from the local library.

THEN The house of shattered wings by Aliette de Bodard. I've heard good things about this and am v interested.

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SUPER late, but I was also out Wednesday, Thursday, Friday nights, so it goes.

Finished reading/put aside:
Crash Override: how Gamergate (nearly) destroyed my life, and how we came win the fight against online hate by Zoe Quinn. Now finished, and everything from my last review stands x2. Highest possible rec.

Provenance by Ann Leckie: I got the book from my local library to give myself longer than the excerpt to see if I settled into it, and only after reading whatever-chunk longer and waiting for the character to get over her birthright/fighting for inheritence thing did I think to read the blurb (I know, I know. Just, starting my reading from a PDF download does that sometimes, apparently), and realised that the whole book is about that and I am so not interested in that narrative. There’s very good odds the narrative is about her actually learning to disregard her ‘birthright’ and forging out on her own, but it feels like it’s going to take way too long for it to get there.

Iain M. Banks by Paul Cincaid. (Read the first two-ish chapters) This is clearly deeply researched, and I imagine an abosolutely fascinating read if you’ve read Banks’ works. I’ve only read a handful, and they were long enough ago that I don’t clearly remember them. I want to be the sort of person who has done the background reading to justify purchasing the rest of this, but alas I’m not. Strong rec, for people who have, though. It looks like a good book.

The art of starving by Sam J Miller. Oh boy. I inhaled the first …fifty pages? And mega, huge trigger warnings for anyone who’s ever had an eating disorder of any kind, pretty much. I’ve not had one, and I also read a fair number of anorexia/ED angsty books as a teen and… thinking back, all of those books were clear enough in their ‘while the character is deep inside their eating disorder, the author is pointing out this is Bad Idea’. There was a level of distance, even while you were inside a sufferer’s head. This is…the author is drawing on his experiences of his own past eating disorder, and it’s SO assured it’s genuinely headfucky, even to someone who’s never actually been there. I’d definitely read more of this author, but I don’t think I can do it myself.

Currently reading
No time to spare by Ursula Le Guin. A compilation of the last decade or so of her blog posts. As always (and now eternally I guess) her turn of phrase is so seemly perfect and effortless. I abruptly want to find like, there’s an archive full of famous authors’ hand edits of their drafts, and I would sell a…something, to be given access to her versions of that. Reading it is still as immensely comforting, laced with bittersweet.

Up next:
I might dip into Sleeping with Monsters: Readings and Reactions in Science Fiction and Fantasy, by Liz Bourke, or back into fiction with In Other Lands, by Sarah Rees Brennan

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Finished reading:
All systems red by Martha Wells. I genuinely expected to like this, and I’m still not sure why it didn’t hook me. I’m there for So Many of those tropes: ‘what happened to the earlier crew?’; people being kind to those that most people aren’t kind to; people who aren’t considered people. Also I realise belatedly that this novella is the one I've seen many raving about. And yet I was never hooked – I read the first third? Half? And then jumped forward to read the last chapter, absently, and while I’m glad for the main character, I wasn’t interested in seeing them get there. It wasn’t bad by any stretch, it just never pinged me. *emoji shrug*

Down among the sticks and bones by Seanan McGuire. I was immensely frustrated by the first published in this series, to the point where I nearly didn’t read this prequel. But oh my god, I was utterly transfixed by this. I felt like there was a glorious depth now that she only needed to focus on two characters, and I loved the world and how creepy-as-ordinary it was. This is actually in all seriousness doing battle with And then there was (n-one) for first place on the novella ballot. I did not expect that at all.

Put aside (much less harsh than did not finish)
River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey (Tor.com Publishing): the writing is skilled, the premise (America starts farming hippoes in the south) is inspired, there’s an agender (they/them) character who is also desired by the main protagonist \o/. I really liked this … except for the act of vicious mutilation-then-murder by the main protagonist really close to the start. And okay, probably he’s being positioned as an anti-hero, but when the main (apparent) antagonist is dealing out less violence with more 'cause' than the antagonist…nope. I’m really bummed. : (

The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang (Tor.com Publishing): I also really wanted to like this one. A culture where gender is not decided until the early teens means we have two they/them pronouned twin main characters, which kudos, dude. But the writing was not quite tight enough, or the emerging plot quite interesting enough to hold me for the entire novella.

Luminescent threads A series of people's love and appreciation letters to Octavia E Butler ten years after her death and just after 45 got elected. It's unsettling somehow that just enough time has passed that we now have books referencing the 45th presidency. It makes for an amazing moment-in-time book, triply so because this moment is in the process of unfolding right now. The letters are gutting and heartfelt, and I'm really glad this book exists, but having only read one of Butler's books, I'm not feeling the urge to read the entire thing.

Currently reading
Crash Override: how Gamergate (nearly) destroyed my life, and how we came win the fight against online hate by Zoe Quinn. Her publishers were kind enough to give an excerpt of the entire first half of the book in the voters pack, and I went and spent $20 on the ebook unhesitatingly to reward that and also give Quinn money. The first half is a harrowing read of what her Ex and co put her through. The second half is what she’s doing after, and examining the haters (who are us, who are all of us in the ‘right’ conditions), and spent the first half horrified and what I’ve read of the second shouting “YES, THAT. Jesus.” A lot. She provides really good advice on digital protection, and what to do if you get in someone’s crosshairs, and how to help someone when you’re a friend or bystander. I wish she’d provided references, but this is still really, really good and really important. Strong rec.

Up next: Maybe Iain Banks, maybe Ursula Le Guin.

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Finished reading:
A skinful of shadows by Frances Hardinge. This was a really satisfyingly crafted and resolved story. It felt like a very moral and human tale, and I appreciated it keenly for that. Also the ending was immensely satisfying to me. Now I’m in the voting conundrum of: “I was more emotionally engaged with La belle sauvage, but Shadows was an infinitely better book”. *angsts at the YA ballot*

The collapsing empire by John Scalzi. I’m loving this. Scalzi’s writing is assured and fucking funny – it’s making me laugh out loud several times a chapter. And then something awful happens, and it’s making me catch my breath and bite my lip to ward off the emotional wallop. I feel like it could be… deeper? I’m fumbling for words. Perhaps I’m used to fat fantasy rather than space opera, but it’s only 300 pages long, and while it’s getting its point across well, I keep expecting something more complicated, or more depth from somewhere. But it’s still a very good read.

[Having now finished] I figured out what was bugging me: this is 3/4 of a novel. It’s a really good three quarters, I loved it, but it’s missing a chunk of worldbuilding and depth that was supposed to make me care about the point of the novel. (That sounds more dire than it actually is). But when there were [character deaths] I felt them viscerally, one so intensely that I read it that first time and then turned the page so I didn’t re-read and cry in public. But that …not even a twist, a pivot point – that didn’t feel earned, because the depth of this world felt as deep as “as much as was needed to write these particular set of characters” rather than ‘fleshing out a living, breathing world’ and that’s a damn shame.

Currently reading:
All systems red by Martha Wells. I’m a couple of pages in, and I cautiously think I’m going to like it.

Up next:
ALLLL the rest of the novellas (well, the four I haven’t read yet).

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Finished reading:
Raven stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee. DNF at ~60%. I realised that I was reading out of a vague sense of obligation, and decided to stop. I still loved Jedao, and I rather liked his interactions with Khiruev, but the rest of it felt like it was close, but still just out of my grasp. It felt like there was some delicious world building of family structures and the different factions but it just didn't hook me. There's also a glorious dynamic from last book that is absent in this book, much to my sorrow. I wanted to like it, but there wasn't enough to justify the four-ish more days of reading when there are so many more things on my Hugo list.

Currently reading:
A skinful of shadows by Frances Hardinge. This deliciously creepy and so well done so far. Makepeace has space within her for ghosts. This is very bleak and gothic, and as someone who's never actually read many of the classics in that genre area, it's really nice to have something that's accessible and with that feel. There's the emotional wrench of being actually-alone in the world and grieving. I also really appreciate how well it's set in its time without drawing too much attention to its 1600s-ness. On page 170 or so of 400 and so far so good.

Up next: Going to collect The collapsing empire by John Scalzi from the library tomorrow afternoon. Excite!

ETA!: (does it count as ETA if you're in the process of posting text you wrote earlier? Whatever) The voters packet is OUT! Downloading ALL the zip files! \o/ I'm especially interested in the related works this year, and which seem to either be full books or really substantial excerpts. Also ALL the novellas to sink my teeth into! The novels are about as anticipated, so I may or may not dig up the excerpted ones.

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Finished reading
La Belle Sauvage Huh. Reading this page by page was an utter, wonderful joy. Pullman is a freaking master here of measured, comforting storytelling, and it’s pitch-perfect for the story and the character he’s telling. On that level, I adored it, and I’m so glad I read it. On a narrative level, it sort of wears its prequel mantel a bit too obviously (the narrative and the story just ends hard, leaving our protagonists abruptly in favour of the all-important ‘baby character who’s central to the next books’, without giving the children characters I’d grown to like an actual ending. So from a narrative and writing perspective it was really interesting to observe, and I’m glad I read it. Actually, I’m interested enough based on how good this was, to give the original trilogy another go, and that’s much higher praise than I was expecting to give!

Summer in Orcus by T Kingfisher (pen name of Ursula Vernon) oh god, now that I’ve finished I can say with utter certainty that this is damn near perfect and the denouement damn near actually made me cry. Fuck. Having only read two of the six finalists, mind, I’d been planning on leaning towards Pullman at the top of my ballot just because Vernon’s won several times now, but I just can’t go past this work. *clutches it*

[Amazon excerpt] In Other Lands, by Sarah Rees Brennan. Um. Huh. The world building and even the scene setting in this is schlocky. Probably this is intentional! I mean, the dialogue is legit laugh out loud hilarious, for example, but the rest of it – including the pacing – is giving me whiplash in comparison Again, it’s probably intentional! But, welp. I’m super, super here for main character being a bi guy, and I’m really looking forward to what I’m hoping is an OT3 (IN A YA BOOK! Oh my god I am so pleased), and I legit want to read it for that. But based on this excerpt I’m not at all sure what it’s doing in the Hugo finalists.

Currently reading:
Raven Strategem by Yoon Ha Jee. The general of Faction A forcibly and pleasantly takes command of the space warships of Faction B to go fight their common enemy. I think. I got this as an eBook loan (public library system ftw!), although I’m keenly missing the ability to highlight passages for later, which is apparently a Kindle function but not an Overdrive function. I really want the ability to flag “Oh, man that info dump is going to be really useful later”. Format whining aside, I am adoring every word that I understand of this. Which is probably about two-thirds of the book, which is a much higher ratio than the first book. The bits that I understand are sharp, amazingly sharp and tight and often really fucking funny. There are women everywhere, and equally unremarked is at least one gender-neutral person. Are there people out there who have read these books and understood the whole calendrical warfare thing immediately? Is it a maths thing that I’m missing? Regardless, I am loving it, to the point where I’m veerry tempted to buy a Kindle version for the highlighting.

Up next:
I've just about given up on the voters packet coming in reasonable time, and have ordered The collapsing empire by John Scalzi on interlibrary loan. Excite!

Tags:

Finished reading
And then there were (n-one) by Sarah Pinsker. A Sarah Pinker gets an invite to SarahCon, where all the attendees are different iterations of Sarah Pinsker… Hell, yeah. This was great. Both in the sense of I’d love to sit down and talk to different iterations of me, and as a nicely-woven story of alternate realities and loss and differences. It’s kinda blatantly meta in places, in ways that I was willing to skate over. The ending was very much a "cool motive. STILL MURDER," in ways that the text doesn't quite address, but this has already shot up on my ballot, and I'm expecting it to remain high, even with four others to read.

Currently reading:
La Belle Sauvage This is wavering slightly for me. Still good! I want to get a better feeling of Alice – I approve of how cranky and baby-skilled she is, but I want to understand where she’s actually coming from. *makes notes for my own writing* But it’s hitting that point of “this is the first in a trilogy, and I’m not sure that we’ve got a ‘Plotline A to wrap up satisfyingly, Plotline B to go on with’” so it’s just going to…stop, and that’s not exactly encouraging me to keep going. I’ve got 100ishh pages to go, and they’re easy enough pages, so we’ll see.

Summer in Orcus oh god, this is destroying me in the best possible way. Ursula Vernon is just getting better and better. This is a skilled (original?) fairy tale, laced with Vernon’s wry humour, but also moments of breathtaking, gutpunch feelings. It feels emotionally real at so many beats that just make me choke up and flail quietly in public. It’s slower going than Belle Sauvage, it feels like it’s asking more of me/the reader somehow, but it also rewards that work in absolute spades.

Up next:
*Refreshes inbox hopefully* I'm hanging out for the voters pack. In the meantime I'll go read the excerpts of the rest of the YA books, and order Provenance from the library, perhaps; it’s both there in the library system and someone in a File770 thread pointed out that Orbit has only done excerpts in the voters’ pack in the past, which… fail, Orbit, fail. Thankfully Tor I think does full, and I’m pretty sure Yoon Ha Lee’s last book published by Solaris was in full *crosses everything*

Tags:

Finished reading:
Six wakes by Mur Lafferty. ( Negativity below )

Currently reading:

La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman. This continues to be a gentle, quiet delight, even with the introduction of a scary fascist religious take-over group. This is written from a sensitive eleven year old’s eyelevel, with the assurance and competency of an adult steering the narration, and I love it so quietly much.

Summer in Orcus by Ursula Vernon. [Pre-read]I think I’ve tried to read the opening of this several times online, and lightly bounced off it each time. Looking forward to settling in with a physical copy and giving it another go (thanks

fred_mouse!)
[60-ish pages in]Physical book was definitely the trick – this is also a delight, and choosing between the two for voting is going to suck. I love Summer and the as yet unnamed weasel. (Heads up for the parental anxiety type that is verging on emotional abuse in part of the first chapter)

Up next:

And Then There Were (N-One), by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny, Mar-Apr 2017) (full text in the link, says file770) Just realised there was a free novella in the list.

Tags:

Finished reading:
Binti: home by Nnedi Okorafor (borrowed from the library ftw!) I bounced off Binti
lurchingly hard, and this book didn’t fix my concerns, exactly (nor, really, did I expect it to). But it did take the narrative off in a different enough direction – and to intriguing places, both worldbuilding and emotionally for the characters -- that I’m willing to let it slide. The second half of this really hooked me in hard. Also, warning, ends on a mid-scene cliffhanger, so you might want to have the last in the series by your side if you read Home…

Currently reading:
The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson. At about Book 8 or so. Paused while I devour Hugo finalists.

La Belle Sauvage (Book of dust ; 1) by Philip Pullman. I’m loving this so much. I bounced off the original trilogy sometime back, but a beloved friend gushed about this book on twitter, and the amazon sample was one of the most comforting, familiar openings I’ve read in a long time. The language is really simplified, even if some of the themes are somewhat older. One age recommendation was about 14+, and I’d so far be pegging this as about 8+, language-wise. It’s going to be my nighttime comfort read, because…

Up next:
Six wakes by Mur Lafferty (thanks for the loan,

fred_mouse!) is definitely going to be a daytime-only read. See previous post for the write up of the sample chapter. I am kinda pumped, and slightly apprehensive. :D

ETA: Notes here while I think of it: want to give Rachel Sharp's "The big book of post-collapse fun" a whirl after Hugos

Tags:

Excerpt write-ups (links from the amazing compilation post at file770)

The Collapsing Empire, by John Scalzi (Tor) (excerpt) (Overdrive excerpt) Spaceship commander fighting off a mutiny and working to save her ship. This was GREAT. I confess I’ve only really read one Scalzi novel – Old man’s war – which I adored, and then I bounced hard off the second in the series at his flat 3^rd person POV voice. (writing first and third person are different skills, and at that point he seemed to have first down really well but not third). I’m delighted to find he’s levelled up hard, since. This was tight and made me smile and then laugh aloud, and then it ramped up the intensity hard. A+ levels of impressed for me. Definitely reading this one, and flat out considering buying it.

New York 2140, by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit) (excerpt) (Overdrive excerpt) New York of 2140 has everyone living half way up the skyscrapers because New York is Venice levels of flooded. It is such a fantastic premise and I was super interested and the writing is… is it ironic? We’re meant to be knowingly in on the joke and mocking these strutting, pontificating characters, right? Because even if we are, I do not care enough so far to wade through it (…fine, pun intended) to find the plot. I might flip through some more of it if it’s in the voters packet. Maybe.

Provenance, by Ann Leckie (Orbit) (excerpt) (Overdrive excerpt) This is a well-written, well-constructed, and grounded –in-its-world opening, and I just…am not personally hooked. I’ve only read the first of Leckie’s Ancillary series, and I vaguely remember having similar thoughts – she’s good, she’s just not my personal style, says this. I’d be tempted to give it the 50-page rule if it’s in the voters pack, though, as a second chance.

Raven Stratagem, by Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris) (excerpt) (Overdrive excerpt) oh yes. I read the first in this series last time it was up, and I had no fucking idea what was going on, but I really liked the brief flashes I did understand. This opening gives me a much, much better sense of what’s going on with the worldbuilding, and it’s horrifying and AMAZING and I’d buy the ebook if it’s not in the voters pack.

Six Wakes, by Mur Lafferty (Orbit) (excerpt) (Overdrive excerpt) This is creepy-awesome. I’m not generally into these murder mysteries, honestly, but the sci-fi trapping and the cloning worldbuilding (holy shit it’s horrifying-awesome) is going to get me over that line. I keep finding myself absently wanting more story (this and Raven Stratagem it feels like) which is an excellent, excellent sign, even if it is claustrophobic enough that it’s going to be daytime reading only, probably.

The Stone Sky, by N. K. Jemisin (Orbit) (excerpt) (Overdrive excerpt) I am torn on even starting this one. I loved the first one, didn’t start the second one because…reasons? I ran out of time? It seemed too deeply (appropriately) grim for my headspace? I can’t remember. Point is, I haven’t read the second one, and I’m assuming it’s going to be crucial to my understanding of the third, so I Hesitate. It’s possible I might have the reading time to get through both? But our internet might need to be out forever for that to happen (knock on wood!)

Tags:

Posting not on Wednesday because I finished way sooner than I thought I would, so!

“Children of Thorns, Children of Water“, by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny, Jul-Aug 2017) This was…not great. The writing was frankly not Hugo-worthy, and it felt like there were three potentially meaty, interesting ideas, any one of which would have made for an interesting novelette or novella, all wodged into one story that just didn’t have the proper space for that many. Then I hit the end of the story and it kinda sounds like an excerpt of an actual novel *makes face*. Or at least something produced as a preview of a novel. I wish they wouldn’t do that, or at least that someone would nix the piece before it made the nomination cut – it does a disservice to the actual novel work. …Apparently I have Opinions about this. I’m not sure I’d go as harsh as to actively ‘no award’ this, but I suspect I’ll be politely leaving it off my ballot.

“Extracurricular Activities“, by Yoon Ha Lee (Tor.com, February 15, 2017) This was great. It’s a story set in the same world as Ninefox gambit (same author), which I didn’t twig to until about a third of the way in while I was trying to remember why Kel Company sounded so familiar... This story leaves aside the (for me) incomprehensible military strategies of this world and goes for a more straight forward “infiltrate the opposing side’s building to extract an operative” narrative. It works as a standalone, it’s tightly written, and it’s funny. It also does great things with sexuality and gender that even makes me hesitate to call it queer because it sounds like this world never bothered to name homo and hetero sexualities. There’s a non-binary character who just is, and gets referred to as them the whole story with nary a blink. Did I mention it’s funny, and the voice was great? Really liked this one, will be ranking it highly.

“The Secret Life of Bots“, by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld, Sep 2017) A relatively charming story of a cleaner bot under orders to hunt out an infestation while the ship and its crew all have a Very Bad Day. The writing could be tighter, and I was left feeling vaguely like I’d read it somewhere before (possibly in the form of Wall-E for all I can remember). Wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t standout, either. *shrug*

“A Series of Steaks“, by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Clarkesworld, Jan 2017) Hah! A tight, original, well-done (…fine, pun intended) look at what organ and flesh printing might be like. I loved both main characters, and their predicament, and it had excellent pacing and structure and voice. Loving the bit where we have so many nbd queer characters this year. That all sounds very dry, but I’m not kidding when I say it’s battling it out for first place, I just read two more pieces before I got to sit down and write this up.

“Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time“, by K.M. Szpara (Uncanny, May-Jun 2017) A trans guy gets turned in a future where the existence of vampires and the transmission of vampirism are both known and regulated. This was really solid and pleasing, and had some heart-squeezing moments of reality of being a vampire – by the time he’ll be able to digest his family’s favourite meals again, they’ll all be centuries dead, for example. Also a great touch on what transitioning to being a vampire does to a body that has already transitioned gender.

“Wind Will Rove“, by Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s, Sep-Oct 2017) So this was glorious? I was dubious about the manuscript layout, because I’m a judgey shit like that, and then I read the first page very late last night, and I just kind of inhaled with pleasure, and proceeded to read all 66 pages in one go, waaay after my lights out. This is the story of a generation ship, and what it’s like to just plain live on the ship, generation after generation of people, and what they try and remember (the touch about Titanic having both of them survive was a great detail), and what each generation does and feels differently and what it might be like to be one of the generations who will live and die on the ship, and if there’s any point to living that existence, and I fucking loved it, the end. (Also another little flag wave for nbd non-straight characters, seriously, this year has been amazing.)

Ballot. Gah, so hard, again.

1. Wind will rove

2. A series of steaks

3. Extracurricular activities

4. Small changes over a long period of time

5. The secret life of bots

Rest of ballot blank

Up next: jumping over the novellas because those are currently just samples and are often free in the voters packet come mid-May. Heading straight for the novel samples from Amazon or wherever (which I read as a way of winnowing down the to-read list into a manageable size).

Tags:

hugo,
reading

“Carnival Nine“, by Caroline M. Yoachim (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, May 2017) – The lives of windup mechanical people and what they choose to do with the time they have. This is bittersweet and touching and well worth a read.

“Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand“, by Fran Wilde (Uncanny, Sep-Oct 2017) Oh my god. I read the first paragraph/section and literally sat back and blinked with pleasure. Heads up for things like body horror, and Victorian era style medical procedures. This was glorious and creepy and unsettling and I loved it. The last section/wrap-up didn’t quite land the punch I was anticipating based on how good the rest of the piece was, but definitely going high up on my list.

“Fandom for Robots“, by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Uncanny, Sep-Oct 2017). An archaic robot discovers fandom. I did not expect to like this but ended up absolutely delighted by it. Profoundly charmed.

“The Martian Obelisk“, by Linda Nagata (Tor.com, July 19, 2017) Oh my heart. A quiet… not even apocalypse, just the quiet end of our species, and what people do with their time. Mars! Quiet apocalypse! Really long-term remote projects (apparently I have really specific narrative loves) I’m so, so here for all these things. The story twists off into unsettling directions, and I love/hate/respect the shit out of it for that. Like Carnival Nine it’s about what you do with your time when you know the end is nigh, even, or especially, if the end is inevitable and soon. Will rank it highly.

“Sun, Moon, Dust“, by Ursula Vernon (Uncanny, May-Jun 2017) Allpa does not actually want his grandmother’s adventuring sword. Ohh this is lovely, gardening and not-adventuring and staying home and safe and cosy all wrapped up in Vernon’s wry, wonderful voice. I want to rank it way up there, but Vernon has so many Hugos already…

"Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™“, by Rebecca Roanhorse (Apex, Aug 2017) You maintain a menu of a half dozen Experiences on your digital blackboard, but Vision Quest is the one the Tourists choose the most. This was excellently written and compelling enough that I stayed up to read it even though I was tired enough to bed down for sleep. But the denouement is a trope I find personally so unhappy making and dis/stressing (not mentioning here because spoilers, happy to talk about it comments) that I have no idea how to rank it. It’s a worthy fic, but, welp.

Man. Man. The nominees are really strong this year, for such annoyingly disparate reasons. Very tentative ballot below.

The Martian Obelisk
Clearly lettered in a mostly steady hand
Carnival Nine
Fandom for robots
Sun, Moon, Dust
Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience

(No 'no award')

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